I know several people who are currently struggling to accept aspects of reality that don’t align with 1. who they believed they would be, 2. how they believed they would feel, or 3. what they believed the world would look like at this moment in time.
When the facts on the ground don’t align with our preferences (and assumptions with where they would end up), that can be difficult to bear.
But if we refuse to work these data points and (at times, truly uncomfortable) truths into our mental models, we limit our capacity to affect and improve upon them.
We can cling to alternative justifications, arguments, and imaginings for as long as we like, and we may even be able to convince ourselves that we were robbed, were hookwinked, were treated unfairly by the universe. That might even be true, from some perspectives and by some metrics, at least.
It’s important to recognize, though, that accepting doesn’t mean approving of something: it just means looking at the facts, acknowledging the actuality of our situation, and adjusting our mental frameworks accordingly.
We don’t have to think a natural disaster, a personal trauma, or a political turn of events is good or fair in order to incorporate it into our understandings and plans.
We don’t have to let go of long-held ambitions or long-cherished beliefs, either; we just have to identify the core of these things and then figure out what that core looks like within a new context.
If we always assumed achieving a particular job title or income level would bring us happiness and fulfillment, but we lose our jobs, and our career trajectories (and near-future income potential) are thus disrupted, we can still pursue happiness and fulfillment; we just have to do so via other means, possibly taking entirely other paths to get there.
Acceptance isn’t approval, and it isn’t settling, either.
Settling is actually deciding not to accept these new realities, because we can’t meaningfully move the dial on anything until we defy our brains’ (understandably protective, but ultimately misguided) impulse to wallow in denial and not think about things that are painful to think about.
Only by recognizing the cold, hard facts of a situation, though—and then making plans based on that acceptance of reality—can we hope to meaningfully (and maybe even positively) influence them.
This won’t always be straightforward or easy, and there may be internal or external variables working against us in this effort.
But there’s power in (eventually) being able to say, “This sucks, but it’s how things are now. Knowing that, where should I be investing my time, energy, and resources? Where do I go from here?”
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